Have wages kept up with prices?

First year. Try the year you were born, or the year you started work.

Second year. Income figures end in 2025. 2026 means January to August 2026.

Pay and income against prices. “After inflation” divides the change in pay by the change in the consumer price index; ahead or behind means more than 2% above or below prices. Factory pay is for production workers in manufacturing, not for all workers. After-tax pay is a federal estimate for one single worker (households and families: married filing jointly): income tax, Social Security and Medicare, no state tax and no credits. A household is not one job: the typical household has more people working and fewer people in it than in 1970. Minimum wage is the federal rate; several states pay more. A full-time year is 2,080 hours. Median weekly pay starts in 1979, household income in 1967 and family income in 1947; income figures end in 2025, so 2026 has none. Where a measure has no number for a year it says No data and is left out of the count. 2026 means January to August 2026.

If pay had kept up exactly. Factory weekly pay before tax, and the federal minimum wage, with each raised by the change in prices between the two years.

Prices against factory pay. Weeks of pay uses factory weekly pay after tax, which changed by +817% from 1970 to 2025. A price that rose less than pay costs fewer weeks of pay. The car price is the government’s average for passenger cars only (US$34,101 in 2026); Kelley Blue Book, a company, reports about US$50,000 for all new vehicles, which is the company’s own figure. The home price is the median for new homes sold. The rent index follows mostly apartments and long-time tenants. Gasoline from 1935 to 1975 is partly estimated. The basket is one unit of each of 11 foods, not a household’s shopping list.